Archive for May, 2009

Warm weather is here in Belgium at last, and it’s the perfect time to make your own ice cream. I got the Philips HR2304 ice cream maker from MediaMarkt the other day (~70 euros), and it certainly gets the job done. You only have to freeze a disc that sits on the bottom of the bowl rather than the whole bowl, itself, which is a very nice convenience since my horrible Belgian freezer is so tiny. Also it’s fairly quiet as motors go, and it’s large enough for making 1L of ice cream.

Here it is pictured above in action, while processing some Chimay-flavored ice cream — how Belgian. Apologies for the picture quality, by the way; although the ice cream maker is so spectacularly white that it looks like it was sent from heaven, I didn’t add that pizzazzle on purpose. Once my camera is working again, we’ll post more photos of the restaurants around Brussels.

More “food” from abroad: a burger-in-a-can from Germany! (a.k.a. “Cheeseburger in der Dose”) Whenever you crave a not-quite-fresh taste of a whole burger — “bun”, “meat”, “tomato”, “cheese” and all — pop open this can for a real “treat”!

Count those ingredients… There’s something so cool about a whole, dry burger in a can.

Actually I’ve been told that this tastes and feels disgusting, and that no one should ever, ever suffer through eating this. I’m afraid that if I crack it open, it will behave something like a Pandora’s box, or that crazy Ark from Indiana Jones, releasing all sorts of swirly evil things I’ll not want to remember. Assuming I survive. That’s why it’s still sitting unopened in my living room as a paperweight, always emitting an aura of simultaneous temptation and foreboding, much like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings.

Any food that you can only buy online and that conjures up so many allusions of destruction really ought to be handled carefully.

If you’re visiting Manhattan in New York, stop off at tiny S’mac for some unhealthy spectacular goodness. It focuses just on macaroni and cheese, and I was an instant fan. This cheddar, mozzarella, ground beef, and brocolli version tasted so rich and bold that I had to take a picture. At least now my brain can remember it in addition to my arteries.

Sorry for the hiatus, folks, but we expats take vacation on a Belgian schedule, too, sometimes. Before we come back, take a look at this great cone of creamy lemon ice cream I tasted recently over in Venice, something very different from all the icier sorbets and sherberts I’ve had in the past. Excellent stuff.

Simply delicious. An egg baked directly into a hot pizza full Parmesan cheese and bacon really hits the spot, especially when in the middle of Venice. It was a masterpiece of flavor painted into the dough, and the rich yolk in the center completed it.